Aliza Shvarts

Last updated
Aliza Shvarts
Born1986 (age 37–38)
NationalityAmerican
Education New York University, Yale University, Whitney Independent Study Program
Known for
Awards Creative Capital Art Writers Award
Website alizashvarts.com

Aliza Shvarts (born 1986) is an artist and writer who works in performance, video, and installation. [1] Her art and writing explore queer and feminist understandings of reproduction and duration, [2] and use these themes to affirm abjection, failure, and "decreation". Simone Weil 's idea of decreation has been described as "a mystical passage from the created to the uncreated" [3] and "a spiritual exercise of mystical passage: across a threshold, from created to uncreated". [4]

Contents

Shvarts' 2008 performance Untitled [Senior Thesis], 2008 [5] generated an international debate. [6] The work explores ideas of fiction and doubt, [7] and engages feminist inquiries into the medical, political, and legal frameworks of gender and reproduction. [8]

Her subsequent works Non-consensual Collaborations (2012–ongoing) and How does it feel to be a fiction (2017) have expanded on such themes as consent, narrative, and doubt. [9] Shvarts holds a BA from Yale University, and a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. [10] [11]

Career

In the spring of her senior year at Yale, Shvarts's first major work, Untitled [Senior Thesis] (2008), was the center of an international debate around abortion. [8] The piece consisted of a "durational" (crudely translated as "extended time") performance of self-induced miscarriages, [12] and was intensely controversial, with criticism from mass media outlets and both anti-abortion and pro-choice political commentators. [7] Yale claimed that the project was a “creative fiction” [13] and requested that Shvarts submit an alternate thesis project in order to graduate. [14] [15] The work has since been considered an important piece of feminist performance art. Theorist, Jennifer Doyle, notes that the performance “exposed the investments of a range of institutional systems in [the female] body as both a creative and reproductive system,” and wrote of the media controversy, “the content of the performance has expanded to include nearly all reaction to it.” [8] Art historian, Carrie Lambert Beatty, writes that the project's “central point [is] that what we take as biological facts are constructed in language and ideology,” noting the different implications of calling Shvarts's bleeding a period, a miscarriage, or an abortion. [1] Shvarts's later artworks made using documentation of Untitled [Senior Thesis] have since been exhibited at Artspace, New Haven [16] and written about in Texte zur Kunst , [17] Mousse , [9] and Artforum . [18]

Shvarts continues to explore ideas surrounding gender, narrative, and truth in her performance Please Come Find Me (2012), in which she invited participants to ask her to do something they thought she'd never done before, [19] as well as Non-consensual Collaborations (2012–ongoing), in which she retroactively designates events and interactions not initially conceived as part of an artistic project as art [20] to explore the gendered dynamics of artistic collaboration. [18] Non-consensual Collaborations has been presented at the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics [21] and The 8th Floor, New York. [22]

In 2017, Shvarts further used digital communication and mass media to engage concepts of “truthiness” and “fake news" in How Does It Feel To Be A Fiction (2017), a viral email performance that explores the various ways in which people are read as fictional along lines of race, class, gender, and sexuality by systems of institutional power. [9] [23] Originally commissioned by Recess’s Critical Writing Fellowship, [24] versions of How Does It Feel To Be A Fiction have been presented at the Universidad de Los Andes, Bogotá, [25] and Artspace, New Haven. [16]

Publications

Shvarts's writing has appeared in TDR: The Drama Review , [26] The Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, [27] and The Brooklyn Rail . [28] [29] She is on the advisory board of Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, [30] where she has published a number of essays, including “Figuration and Failure, Performance and Pedagogy: Reflections Three Years Later,” which considers what it meant to be known for a piece that had, at the time, never been exhibited publicly. [5] [31] She has given talks and lectures at Artists Space, [32] the Whitney Museum, [33] [34] Harvard University, [35] and Abrons Arts Center, [36] among other institutions. In addition to her artistic and scholarly work, Shvarts has written liner notes for the drone metal band Sunn O)))'s album Kannon [37] and appeared as a guest commentator on MTV. [38]

Exhibitions

Shvarts's work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at Artspace, New Haven, which occurred on the decade anniversary of Untitled [Senior Thesis] (2008) being censored by Yale. [16] She has also exhibited and performed at Abrons Art Center [39] and Lévy Gorvy in New York;[ citation needed ] the Slought Foundation in Philadelphia; [40] and Performance Space [41] and the Tate Modern [42] in London, among other venues. She frequently designs stage sets for and performs with Carmelita Tropicana, [43] and has collaborated with Vaginal Davis, [44] Emma Sulkowicz, [22] [45] and Critical Practices, Inc. [46]

Awards and fellowships

Shvarts was a 2017 Critical Writing Fellow at Recess, New York [24] and a 2014 recipient of the Creative Capital | Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. [2] [47] She attended the Whitney Independent Study Program as a Helena Rubinstein Fellow in Critical Studies in 2014 to 2015. [48]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Performance art</span> Artwork created through actions of an artist or other participants

Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Catherine Opie</span> American fine-art photographer (born 1961)

Catherine Sue Opie is an American fine art photographer and educator. She lives and works in Los Angeles, as a professor of photography at the University of California, Los Angeles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eva Hesse</span> German-born American sculptor and textile artist (1936-1970)

Eva Hesse was a German-born American sculptor known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. She is one of the artists who ushered in the postminimal art movement in the 1960s.

Sarah Sze is an American artist and professor of visual arts at Columbia University. Sze's work explores the role of technology, information, and memory with objects in contemporary life utilizing everyday materials. Her work often represents objects caught in suspension. Drawing from Modernist traditions, Sze confronts the relationship between low-value mass-produced objects in high-value institutions, creating the sense that everyday life objects can be art. She has exhibited internationally and her works are in the collections of several major museums.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hannah Wilke</span> American artist (1940–1993)

Hannah Wilke (born Arlene Hannah Butter; was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist. Her work is known for exploring issues of feminism, sexuality and femininity.

Jon Kessler is an American artist. He began college at SUNY Purchase from 1974—78 but left after two years to travel in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. He returned to Purchase in 1978 and graduated in 1980 with honors. Following graduation, Kessler took up a studio in Brooklyn, New York where he continues to work today. He was one of the founders of the Bozart toy company and is currently a professor at Columbia University. He also plays guitar for the X-Patsys, a band he started with artist Robert Longo and actress Barbara Sukowa.

Untitled [Senior Thesis] was a work of performance art by Aliza Shvarts which she conducted during 2008, the final year of her visual arts degree at Yale University. During the 9 month performance Shvarts inseminated herself, and on the twenty-eighth day of her menstrual cycle, she took herbal medications meant to induce menses or miscarriage. The piece generated controversy at the time, and considerable debate revolved around whether or not the project was a "hoax" or "creative fiction". In subsequent years, scholars and critics have described that uncertainty as a core part of the work itself.

K8 Hardy is an American artist and filmmaker. Hardy's work spans painting, sculpture, video, and photography and her work has been exhibited internationally at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Modern, Tensta Konsthalle, Karma International, and the Dallas Contemporary. Hardy's work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. She is a founding member of the queer feminist artist collective and journal LTTR. She lives and works in New York, New York.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">April Gornik</span> American painter

April Gornik is an American artist who paints American landscapes. Her realist yet dreamlike paintings and drawings embody oppositions and speak to America's historically conflicted relationship with nature. While she doesn't categorize herself as an environmental artist, she is a passionate supporter of environmental causes and has said, "I have no problem with people reading an ecological message into my work."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ulrike Müller (artist)</span> Austrian artist

Ulrike Müller is a contemporary visual artist. Müller is a member of the New York-based feminist genderqueer group LTTR as well as an editor of its eponymous journal. She also represented Austria at the Cairo Biennale in 2011. She is currently a professor and co-chair of Painting at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Rochelle Feinstein is a contemporary American visual artist who makes abstract paintings, prints, video, sculpture, and installations that explore language and contemporary culture. She was appointed professor in painting and printmaking at the Yale School of Art in 1994, where she also served as director of graduate studies, until becoming professor emerita in 2017.

<i>Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight)</i> American performance art piece

Mattress Performance (Carry That Weight) (2014–2015) was a work of endurance/performance art which Emma Sulkowicz conducted as a senior thesis during the final year of a visual arts degree at Columbia University in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emma Sulkowicz</span> American artist and activist

Emma Sulkowicz is an American political activist and performance artist. While a college student, Sulkowicz developed a national reputation with the performance artwork Mattress Performance (2014–2015). In 2019, they said they had stopped making art and began a master's program in traditional Chinese medicine.

Karen Archey is an American art critic and curator based in New York City and Amsterdam. She is the Curator of Contemporary Art and Time-Based Media at Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and the former editor of e-flux.

In April 2013, Emma Sulkowicz, an American fourth-year visual arts major at Columbia University in New York City, filed a complaint with Columbia University requesting expulsion of fellow fourth-year student and German national, Paul Nungesser, alleging he had raped Sulkowicz in her dorm room on August 27, 2012. Nungesser was found not responsible by a university inquiry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Whitney Fosburgh</span> American painter, art collector, and art historian

James Whitney Fosburgh was an American painter, art collector, and art historian. In addition to lecturing and writing about art, he served as Chairman of the Special Committee for White House Paintings under both President Kennedy and President Johnson. Fosburgh and his wife, Mary ("Minnie") Cushing, were prominent art collectors in New York City.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Baseera Khan</span> American artist

Baseera Khan is an American visual artist who uses material, form, and color to express non-verbal concepts in sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Reed (artist)</span> American artist (1938–2014)

Robert James Reed Jr. was an American artist and professor of painting and printmaking at Yale School of Art for 45 years. In 1987, Reed was appointed to Yale School of Art's tenured permanent faculty making him, at the time of his death, the School's first and only African-American to be so appointed in the School's then 145 year history. In his artwork, Reed is known for his geometric abstraction and personalized symbols to create a language of abstraction. He employs abstract symbols, color and deeply textured brushwork to create his iconic imagery. As Reed would explain, fragments, paths, cultural and universal signs and symbols, remembered childhood images and places are organized into his imagery. His abstractions are referential and have their basis in "real" form that exists solidly in the real world in real space. His work includes paintings, drawings, monotypes, prints and collages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ilana Harris-Babou</span> American artist

Ilana Harris-Babou is an American sculptor and installation artist. Harris-Babou was born in Brooklyn, New York. Her upbringing was discussed in an interview on the Amy Beecher Show in August 2019. She is currently assistant professor of art and the Luther Gregg Sullivan Fellow in Art at Wesleyan University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elke Solomon</span> American artist and author (1943–2024)

Elke Solomon was an American artist, curator, educator and community worker. She was known for her interdisciplinary practice that combines painting, drawing, object-making, performance and installation. Solomon exhibited widely in the United States and abroad.

References

  1. 1 2 Lambert-Beatty, Carrie (Summer 2009). "Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility" (PDF). October . 129 (129): 51–84. doi:10.1162/octo.2009.129.1.51. S2CID   57560104. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-06-12. Retrieved 2018-05-30.
  2. 1 2 "Aliza Shvarts - Grantees". Arts Writers Grant Program. 2014. Retrieved 2018-05-30.
  3. ↑ Marcus Boon and Gabriel Levine, “The Promise of Practice” in Documents of Contemporary Art: Practice (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2018), 21.
  4. ↑ Robert, William (2005). "Decreation , or Saying Yes" (PDF). Epoché: The University of California Journal for the Study of Religion. 23 (1): 59–85. Retrieved 28 June 2018.
  5. 1 2 Hagen, Lisa Hall (4 April 2012). "A performance ethics of the 'real' abortive body: The case of Aliza Shvarts and 'Untitled [Senior Thesis], 2008'". Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre and Performance. 2 (1): 21–39. doi:10.1386/peet.2.1.21_1.
  6. ↑ Finch, Charlie (12 May 2008). "Mission Aborted". ArtNet. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  7. 1 2 Schotzko, T. Nikki Cesare (2015). "Not yet finished, never yet begun: Aliza Shvarts, the girl from West Virginia, and the consequence of doubt". Learning how to fall: art and culture after September 11. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge. pp. 99–128. ISBN   9781138796881. OCLC   890462461.
  8. 1 2 3 Doyle, Jennifer (2013). "Three Case Studies in Difficulty and the Problem of Affect". Hold it against me: difficulty and emotion in contemporary art. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 28–39. ISBN   9780822353027. OCLC   808216847.
  9. 1 2 3 Vogel, Wendy (Summer 2018). "Going Viral: Aliza Shvarts's Daring Performance Work". Mousse . 64: 250.
  10. ↑ Alptraum, Lux (21 July 2018). "There is Life After Campus Infamy". The New York Times.
  11. ↑ "Aliza Shvarts on Being Banned and What We Have in Common (interview)". Impact Mania. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  12. ↑ Shvarts, Aliza (18 April 2008). "Shvarts Explains Her 'Repeated Self-Induced Miscarriages'". Yale News. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  13. ↑ Arenson, Karen W. (23 April 2008). "An Artwork at Yale May Not Be Real, but the Furor Is". The New York Times.
  14. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (2008-04-22). "Yale Demands End to Student's Performance". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-05-30.
  15. ↑ Gelder, Lawrence Van (2008-05-01). "Yale Students' New Art". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2018-05-30.
  16. 1 2 3 "Aliza Shvarts: Off Scene May 11- June 30, 2018". Artspace New Haven. 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  17. ↑ Fusco, Coco (March 2018). "Learning the Rules of the Game: Art Without Rules?". Texte zur Kunst . 109: 108.
  18. 1 2 Olunkwa, Emmanuel (June 12, 2018). "Interviews: Aliza Shvarts talks about her exhibition at Artspace in New Haven, Connecticut". Artforum .
  19. ↑ Schotzko, 124.
  20. ↑ Kachel, Andrew (2017). "Aliza Shvarts". Out of Order. Summer: 260.
  21. ↑ "Aliza Shvarts". Hemispheric Institute. Archived from the original on 2018-06-28. Retrieved 2018-05-30.
  22. 1 2 "March 29: Consent/Dissent, a talk by Aliza Shvarts and Emma Sulkowicz". The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. 24 March 2017. Archived from the original on 10 June 2018. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  23. ↑ Szymanek, Angelique (2018). "Aliza Shvarts: Material Fictions". Off-Scene. New Haven, CT: Artspace. pp. 3–7.
  24. 1 2 Shvarts, Aliza (6 April 2017). "Aliza Shvarts: How Does it Feel to Be a Fiction?". Recess. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  25. ↑ "(No) coma cuento Verdad y mentira al mismo tiempo (y en sentido contrario)". De Cabeza (in Spanish). 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  26. ↑ Shvarts, Aliza (1 June 2014). "The Con". TDR/The Drama Review. 58 (2): 2–3. doi: 10.1162/dram_a_00342 . S2CID   57564363.
  27. ↑ Keilty, Patrick; Dean, Rebecca (2013). Litwin Books, LLC : Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader. Litwin Books, LLC. ISBN   978-1-936117-16-1 . Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  28. ↑ Shvarts, Aliza (5 February 2015). "Black Wedding". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  29. ↑ Barron, Michael (1 December 2015). "How Sunn O)))'s Subversive Metal Birthed An Album With A Buddhist Heart". The Fader. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  30. ↑ "About the Journal". Women & Performance. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  31. ↑ Shvarts, Aliza (March 2011). "Figuration and Failure, Pedagogy and Performance: Reflections Three Years Later" (PDF). Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory. 21 (1): 155–162. doi:10.1080/0740770X.2011.563047. S2CID   191495535.
  32. ↑ "In the Last Instance". Artists Space. 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  33. ↑ "Critical Utopianism from Yoko Ono to Jimmie Durham - Whitney Museum of American Art". Whitney Museum of American Art. 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  34. ↑ "Learning Series Lecture: Participation/ Occupation/ Belonging - Whitney Museum of American Art". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  35. ↑ "ARTS@DRCLAS/ HAA/ VES Series: Prosthetic Realities Programming". David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies. Harvard University. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  36. ↑ "Queens of Welfare / Pawns of Capital: ReframingWelfare Debates Through Archives, Public Discussions and Brunch". Abrons Arts Center. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  37. ↑ Bakare, Lanre (3 December 2015). "Sunn O))): Kannon review – daunting but oddly relaxing drone-metal". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  38. ↑ "Performance Artist Aliza Shvarts Comments On Kayne West's 'Runaway' (Video Clip) - MTV". MTV. Retrieved 30 May 2018.[ dead link ]
  39. ↑ "Subject to Capital". Abrons Arts Center. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  40. ↑ "Emergent Perspectives". Slought. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  41. ↑ "April 2015: Directing Actions". Performance Space. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  42. ↑ Abrahamson, Zachary; Kaplan, Thomas (26 June 2008). "Shvarts to present new piece at Tate Modern". Yale News. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  43. ↑ McHugh, Kathleen (2013). "Bio-Performatives, Cross-Species, and Continents of Plastic in Chicas 2000 and Post Plastica: An Interview with Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano". S&F Online. Barnard Center for Research on Women. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  44. ↑ Auder, Michel; Stickrod, Michael (2015). "The Magic Flute, Part Two: A Film in Pieces - 80 Washington Square East Galleries - NYU Steinhardt". Steinhardt. NYU. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  45. ↑ "Emma Sulkowicz with Kang Kang". The Brooklyn Rail. 1 May 2017. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  46. ↑ "About Us". Critical Practices Inc. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  47. ↑ "2014 Warhol Arts Writers Grants Announced". ArtForum. 4 December 2014. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
  48. ↑ "Whitney Independent Study Program Critical Studies Symposium: Critical Perspectives on Visual Culture - Whitney Museum of American Art". Whitney Museum of American Art. Retrieved 30 May 2018.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.